sisters reunited
by hellishtrollop
Summary: "It is beautiful, Ingrid thinks, like a fairytale, not the fairytales with wolves that eat girls or witches that eat children, but the ones that begin with once upon a time and end in happily ever after, and it is so very magnificent. How can it not be?" The ribbons have far more power than just harnessing their magic. Emma experiences this firsthand.


Ingrid's first _real_ victory, the first victory she can almost taste on her tongue (like thick, honeyed syrup poured against her teeth and down the back of her throat it's so sweet, like snowfall it's so delicate that she feels almost as though she'll close her eyes for one moment and it will all be gone in an instant) is when Emma comes to her in the heart of the forest, identical ribbons around each of their wrists. The Savior's eyes are slightly vacuous, as though she is staring through Ingrid, and her voice, beneath all of the joy and the affection, is blank. But Ingrid pays attention to none of that — why _should_ she? She is more halfway done building her second family, and it will be so much _better_.

Yes, she _is_ mildly surprised, that Emma had come to her first. She had expected Elsa to give in to the natural magics woven into the ribbon first. Emma is the golden-haired princess-turned-warrior, after all. Hers is a tale of sorrow and magic and family (but never the _right_ family, not until now); and, of course, Elsa is equally important, but Ingrid had not quite expected her to fight the effects longer than Emma. Not that it matters. They will both come to her in her own time.

She is a very patient woman, after all, and she always has been.

Elsa and Emma are strong separately, and even stronger together. It is beautiful, Ingrid thinks, like a fairytale, not the fairytales with wolves that eat girls or witches that eat children, but the ones that begin with _once upon a time_ and end in _happily ever after_, and it is so very magnificent. How can it not be? Emma's white-hot light magic protects her from the cold of Ingrid's little hideaway, and Ingrid smiles at the knowledge that Elsa had helped Emma to control her powers, in the end. It is so very terrible that she had not been there to see it for herself; surely it must have made the most spectacular sight.

For so many years, she had closed her eyes at night and dreamed of, not Helga and Gerda, but of Elsa and herself, and their third sister. A long time ago, it had just been a faceless figure that flashed behind her eyes in sleep, but it had mattered to her then as much as it mattered to her now. Two queens and the Savior, who might very well be their _knight_ — she laughs out loud at the thought, and Emma glances at her from where she's reading one of Ingrid's books.

Emma is not the studious type, she knows. Of _course_ she knows. She knows everything about Emma, and everything about Elsa; but, naturally, they must do _something_ while they wait for Elsa to come to them. Surely the effects have taken hold by now. She likes to imagine the looks on Emma's biological parents' faces the moment that Emma had escaped from their suffocating, unknowing grasp.

No, they would never know anything, most certainly not about _magic_. They were ordinary. They may have been queens and kings or princesses and princes in another life, but this was not that life, and they were normal now, without magic, without anything that could possibly connect them to their daughter.

Emma would never be _theirs_ again.

Emma would only be Ingrid's and Elsa's, and Elsa would only be Emma's and Ingrid's.

And Ingrid, of course, would be only Elsa's and Emma's, but that had already been set into stone a long time ago. All of it had been. The Three Sisters, destined to be together at last.

It could very well be a fairytale, but she did not need recognition. She did not need her name to be written down in a storybook. She only needed to know that three pieces had become a whole.

And eventually, the third piece would come to them all on her own.

Ingrid simply could not wait.

Metaphorically speaking. Of course she could wait, in all reality; she could wait for years, if that was what it took, but she knew she would not have to.

"What's so funny?" murmurs Emma, throwing herself down gracelessly on the chaise lounge beside Ingrid. Later, perhaps Ingrid would feel a sense of loss deep inside of herself, settled behind her spine and in the pit of her stomach and somewhere in the darkest depths of her icy heart at the knowledge that this is all somewhat forced. It is merely a spell that winds them together, and destiny. Emma does not truly love her. Elsa does not truly love her. Ingrid adores them both, and yet.

And yet.

But that will come much later, if it ever does, and she doubts that it will. "Oh, I was just thinking," replies Ingrid, gently curling an arm around the younger woman's shoulders. She smells like pine and the leather of her charming jackets, and Ingrid kisses the top of her head and inhales the faintly citric scent of her hair, soft as Ingrid trails her fingertips through it. Emma could very well be angelic, like this. Not that Ingrid asks for it. She wants many things, but for Emma to change completely is not one of those things.

This is another difference between herself and _them_, Emma's parents only by blood — she loves them for what Emma was and is and will become, and they do not love Emma at all. Merely the _idea_ of her.

The thought angers her, but she does not reveal it so easily on her face. Instead, she kisses Emma's forehead, and the younger woman smiles at her and says, "Love you," in this casual, languid way that makes Ingrid's heart tighten with such joy that, for a moment, she cannot think or breathe or do anything but simply bask in those words.

"And I love you," she says, and does not think of Helga.

Emma glances around the room, all glittering ice and white decorations, and shimmies downwards so that she can lay her head in Ingrid's lap. It is a comfortable moment and Ingrid would be well satisfied if it could stretch on forever. "You should get a TV for this place, as much as I like bookshelves and bookshelves and bookshelves and—" she takes a breath— "bookshelves of books." Ingrid smiles widely and laughs, stroking Emma's hair. She reaches, with her other hand, for Emma's hand, the one folded over her stomach. Emma lets her, naturally.

Their hands fit together perfectly, Ingrid thinks. "If that is what you want, Emma," she responds simply, fondly, "Anything that you want that is in my power to give, I will do so happily."

"Anything?" Her sister stretches out each syllable hopefully, staring up at Ingrid.

"Anything," she promises.

Emma swings herself up quickly, peering at Ingrid with wide, doe-like eyes. "So, if I said I was craving pizza, you would say..."

Ingrid waves her hand without a second thought; she only has to watch Emma, her playfully pleading face and the fact that she is fulfilling one of her sister's desires, however small and unimportant it may be, by doing this, to conjure the food from thin air. Granted, she's always preferred food that she can eat with a fork and a knife or a spoon rather than with her hands like a brute, but to see Emma grin at her is quite worth it, she finds. "I would say dig in."

"You're the best," says Emma like they've been sisters for years and not less than a week. Ingrid knows very well that that is the absolute truth, as far as Emma knows. The spell, after all, is nothing if not well-woven. Emma adds something that sounds like _I can't believe you don't like pizza_, but it comes distantly, because by then, Ingrid is thinking.

Emma is not at all like Helga. Elsa is not at all like Gerda. Of _course_ they aren't. Her new family has magic; they understand what it is like to be outcasts. Elsa, more than anything. Emma had not truly understood until recently, but that did not matter; it did not matter whether they had known for years or days. Once Elsa comes to them, they would be whole, together; a family not of the blood that ran through their veins, but of something far deeper, a bond that was strong like heated steel, a bond that no one would ever be able to break.

No, they would not be like Helga and Gerda and Ingrid at all.

_They would be so much better._

_Without_ anyone to interfere.

Storybrooke, Elsa, Emma, the happiness she'd been chasing after for so very long — it would all be _hers_.

Ingrid smiles.

Someone looking in from the outside might have thought it sinister.


End file.
